


Full Circle

by potentiality_26



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Community: older_not_dead, Established Relationship, F/M, Future Fic, Het, Mentions of Jefferson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 07:06:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2220018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potentiality_26/pseuds/potentiality_26
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Rumplestiltskin eyed her.  “I have little desire to take on another princess for a maid.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“I didn’t think it went so terribly for you the last time,” Belle replied.</em>
</p>
<p>Belle and Rumplestiltskin end up more or less back where they started.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Full Circle

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the older_not_dead Promptathon 18 (History) prompt: when you get to live forever.
> 
> I really have no idea where things are going on OUAT lately, so I was a little at sea imagining a "Future Fic" scenario. Many thanks to [PhoenixDragon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/PhoenixDragon) for giving me some great ideas and generally holding my hand. As for the actual contents, I'm not sure how valid or possible this scenario is. I just want them to be happy, you know?

Somewhere along the way, Belle determined that the main thing you learned if you lived long enough was that history had a way of repeating itself. She didn’t understand it in the fatalistic, nothing-matters-why-bother way she was aware that certain people did, but she had begun to realize that the universe did have a kind of… symmetry to it.

Given that symmetry, it made sense that she and Rumplestiltskin would find themselves back where they started eventually.

They had traveled, for a long time- sometimes with Jefferson, other times with someone new, and others still alone together. More often than not, they encountered worlds that needed saving; Belle tried to meet these head on, dragging her husband along behind her. Rumplestiltskin was not, in fact, a coward, but his brand of self-sacrifice was a rare and subtle creature, and- coupled with his reluctance to meddle in the affairs of others when he had nothing to gain- this was functionally the same thing as cowardice, at times. In such moments he would look at her sidelong, as if he expected reproach, but she would keep silent. If caution and a constitutional lack of altruism were functionally the same as cowardice, then his refusal to leave her alone in danger (well, to leave her alone in danger _again_ ) could be the same as courage. At any rate, Belle had boldness enough for both of them.

When they eventually returned to the world they had come from, it was almost completely scoured of life. Belle was aware that there was much rebuilding ahead. The Dark Castle was even darker now that it had been left more or less to ruin- and she suspected that Rumplestiltskin had been letting it fall down around him for some time before the curse as well- and Belle knew as she hadn’t, in the beginning, that though her skills were many housekeeping had never, in fact, been among them.

As Belle set about rejuvenating the place she had long ago come to think of as home, their land was being rebuilt as well. Those few who had remained still didn’t understand what, exactly, had happened to their home, let alone why. Ogres had overrun the enchanted forest, but there were groups of people keen on taking it back.

And, one day, a princess followed a rumor and made her way- through great danger- to the Dark Castle to see if the powerful being she had heard about really existed, and if he could help.

It reminded Belle of another kingdom once beset by monsters, and she couldn’t turn the princess away.

Rumplestiltskin’s powers were, by that time, fundamentally different than they had been when Belle met him, but in most practical senses they were more or less the same. And Belle understood that he had always helped people, in his way. The trouble had been how he went about it.

They gave the girl a place to stay- reluctantly, on Rumplestiltskin’s part- while she recuperated after her long journey.  Belle put this much to him over breakfast as their guest slept in.  

“I suppose, my dear,” he said as he rather imperiously buttered a scone, “that you would prefer me to give miracles away. Like a fairy.” This last was uttered with considerable venom.

Belle reminded her husband that matter was never created or destroyed.

He raised his eyebrows, waved his hand, and created matter: a pretty bouquet of flowers for a centerpiece.

She silently asked the universe for strength, something which- in her view- it was never shy of providing. “It’s something I read in a book back in Storybrooke. To do with… science, I think. The point is that you don’t get something for nothing. I know how the game is played: either the wisher pays the price or you do. For my part, I was happy to pay the debt to save my people- and the bargain, in that case, was a sensible one.”

Rumplestiltskin eyed her. “I have little desire to take on another princess for a maid.”

“I didn’t think it went so terribly for you the last time,” Belle replied.

He huffed softly, as if he found her argument tiresome- but the look in his eyes told a different tale. Sometimes he watched her like he couldn’t quite believe she was real, let alone at his side after all this time. There had been moments when she’d questioned her own sanity; she had left him more than once, and the way he looked at her when she came back was balm for her injured pride. He would lie, or at least misdirect. He would maintain that they were better off apart. He would do things that she couldn’t forgive- admittedly, primarily because she wasn’t the injured party. But she came back because he had let her go once, and always let her go- because he was always the first to believe he was poison. She came back because she loved him and- though it was sometimes a little more in question- he loved her. As another book she read back in Storybrooke said, the course of true love never did run smooth. There was also the fact that he had not always been the one in the wrong, over the years. There was a… compass in Belle’s heart, one she rarely questioned- but sometimes her values were ill-suited to the times. That had been one of the harder lessons she stood to learn, but it appeared to be an important component to wisdom- or cynicism, depending on who she asked. She didn’t generally ask, though- however much the two of them might change, cynicism would remain his territory.     

The spell he’d woven- one she ultimately only half understood- would keep her alive forever, or as long as he lived- whichever came first. What the price for that magic had been she didn’t understand at all. Perhaps it drew something from him to her through the connection that had existed between them since that first kiss, and had not, technically, created anything that wasn’t already there. Or perhaps the price was, in fact, to live forever- she had already seen that the whole business was as much a trial as a blessing. Whatever it was, Belle made the best of things- that was her territory.

She knew that the difference in their ages would always be between them- the one that went beyond how they looked to encompass all the years he’d lived alone in that castle before they met, the years she could see in his eyes if not on his face. But she had lived years no one could see too, alone in one of the two tiny cells Regina had locked her up in. With no identity, no memories of her real life and no manufactured one, Belle had spent the time waiting for their Savior to come to Storybrooke in a kind of limbo, where years and then decades passed like a fraction of a second and an age at the same time. And though they would never exactly be even, Belle knew now that the passage of time looked different to one who lived outside that natural flow of it.

“At any rate,” she told him, “what I meant was that there is nothing wrong with asking a person to work for what they want. If it truly matters, they _will_ rise to the occasion.”

“That was always my view.” He smiled, all teeth- an expression which was both more natural and completely bizarre given that his face, these days, looked completely human.

“No doubt.” She patted her husband’s hand. “But any business of a firstborn child for a bag of gold or a pair of glass slippers will have to go. Proportionality is the key here, if we’re going to help people rather than just make their lives a misery.”

“I’m not sure it’s fair to say that helping people was ever my goal.”

“That’s true,” she said, and it didn’t drive her mad like it once did, which was something. She didn’t always know how she could love him so much and still find him so frustrating, but she did. “But there is plenty of time to change.” And she believed that; symmetry the universe might have in spades, but that didn’t mean the same mistakes had to be made.

And she knew that he didn’t entirely believe that things could change- that _he_ could change- but for her he would try, and that was what mattered.

When the princess came down the stairs she sat the foot of the table. Rumplestiltskin was at the head, and Belle was beside him, and he said, “So, dearie- why don’t we make a deal?”


End file.
